Miller: Recovery still slow in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward

Jan. 31, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Workers in 2006 prepare to cut up the barge that landed in the New Orleans' decimated Ninth Ward. The barge became an internationally recognized symbol of the severity of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. AP PHOTO/CAROLYN KASTER

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The Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Reverend Rowan Williams visits the All Souls Church in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in 2007. AP PHOTO/BILL HABER

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The Sons of Jazz Brass Band march in a second line parade through the Lower Ninth Ward to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in 2010. The area is still recovering - slowly - from the disaster in 2005. AP PHOTO/GERALD HERBERT

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Recording artist Lil Wayne skates in a new skateboard park he helped finance along with Glu Agency and Mountain Dew, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans last September. AP PHOTO/GERALD HERBERT

Workers in 2006 prepare to cut up the barge that landed in the New Orleans' decimated Ninth Ward. The barge became an internationally recognized symbol of the severity of Hurricane Katrina's destruction.AP PHOTO/CAROLYN KASTER

NEW ORLEANS – The buses? They don't seem to be rolling by as often anymore, which must be a sign of progress, right?

"Rebirth Tours," the operators call them. The folks in the Lower Ninth Ward have other names for the voyeurs and gawkers and those who transport them here to marvel at the scars of a natural disaster that consumed this neighborhood whole.

Newspapers, you probably understand, aren't allowed to print those kinds of names.

"They were making it like this was Disneyland," says Carolina Gallop, who has lived here 16 years. "'Come see the lions, tigers and bears!' We were being taken advantage of. People would come out to get the mail in their pajamas and there'd be a tour bus with 50 people parked right in front of their house, taking pictures."

For folks whose lives already had been gashed with the world watching, whose privacy had been washed away with their possessions and their homes, their pasts and their futures, and, in same cases, washed away with their families, those tourists were trampling on exposed, quivering nerves.

Even worse, the money those tour companies were making? Rarely did a dime of it land here.

So maybe city officials really have cracked down or maybe the fascination is just fading, but the parade of buses — and the bike tours just like them — have slowed. Of course, with Super Bowl XLVII in town and 150,000 visitors expected to descend ...

"Oh, they made sure everything was right for the Super Bowl," Lower Ninth resident Waddell Wyatt says. "But look around here. We're the forgotten ones. But that's our city, you know."

New Orleans has come a long way since Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, 2005. Most of her shines today, brilliantly so, her remarkable resilience reflected in the hearts of a gritty populace.

But the Lower Ninth Ward — one of the most devastated areas, a neighborhood where a 200-foot barge called ING 4727 came to rest, crushing several houses — also has been one of the slowest places to come back.

Politics have been blamed, locals noting that the Lower Ninth traditionally has been occupied by the black, the poor and the generally less fortunate.

But assigning blame isn't the point of this column. We haven't the expertise or the right. A simple snapshot, a picture of a stark situation as it still exists today, just five miles from the Superdome, that's our only motive.

The Family Dollar is gone. So are St. Claude Hardware and Chicken Mart, both vacant and looking almost haunted.

The parking lot of one gas station long since abandoned is now home to a bright orange bus with a palm tree painted on the side. "Tropical Paradise Party Bus Rentals," it reads.

On his way to work Thursday morning, Paul Edmonds heard a radio show on which they were asking listeners for their opinion. Has New Orleans recovered from Katrina?

"That's kind of a stupid question," Edmonds says. "Recover? New Orleans will never recover. All we can do is rebuild and renew. But there never will be a full recovery."

Edmonds was the one who answered the door when we rang the bell. This building used to be a drugstore before being buried in water. Now, it's a church, All Souls Episcopal. The locals call it "St. Walgreens."

All Souls is another sign of progress, an undeniable one. So is the nearby Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School for Science and Technology, with its beautiful red gates and solid brick work.

In September, the Oliver Bush Playground reopened. And its basketball pavilion and resurfaced tennis courts and re-sodded baseball field all are signs of advancement, sources of pride.

"There's a lot of hope in people's hearts here," Edmonds says. "We've seen a lot of good changes. People just keep chipping away, chipping away."

The truth is the Lower Ninth is a puzzle with pieces that sparkle interlocking with pieces still mutilated.

Take a left on Caffin Avenue, toward one of the levees that failed to hold back Katrina's fury and here's what awaits: Lots that once contained homes but now hold only their concrete foundations, two-story piles of debris and yards choking on 6-foot tall vegetation.

But then, at the very end of Caffin, just before you hit the railroad tracks and then the bayou, there's another stunning brick structure, a house with Mardi Gras bunting hanging out front and a satellite dish perched on the roof.

"This neighborhood will make it back," Tia Moore-Henry says. "But it will take some pioneers or at least that sort of spirit."

She is one of those pioneers. Tia and her husband, Fred Henry Jr., recently opened Café Dauphine, a white-tablecloth sit-down with flowers and hot sauce on each table and a fried oyster po-boy that strongly suggests the place will succeed.

Fred's mom and sister still live nearby. Across the street is his grandmother's house.

Asked if the couple hesitated to reinvest in their bruised and broken community, Tia says, "Not for a second."

Less than 100 feet from Café Dauphine's first door, looking diagonally, there's a boarded-up house, like many others here, still bearing the spray-painted markings of the search-and-rescue workers who entered it after Katrina.

Yeah, progress is visible all over New Orleans, even here, where it's just moving slowly. But at least it's fast enough now to outrun most of the voyeur parades.

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